


The Sharpest Knife

by Pitseleh



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Drug Use, Extended Scenes, F/M, Mild Gore, Slow Burn, The Mildest, Violence, alternate perspective of, extra scene, extremely mild gore, switching POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What, you want me to cry? I'm sorry your vault left the door open and got lit up by raiders, or whatever happened, but c'mon. The world out here ain't nicer. Since your face looks like ground brahmin, I'd wager you already figured that part out. Go find some little safe bunker to live in before this world eats you up."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fucking Tourists.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a playthrough where I skipped Concord and went straight for Diamond City. I reached Goodneighbor at level four, which is not recommended, but certainly exciting.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Go fuck yourself," is the first Hancock hears from the new resident, "with a hammer."

He likes to keep an eye on the people who drift into town, because some of them might need help, and some of them might need help into the grave. This one is certainly in the former category; bruised and bleeding, she's covered in filth and holding her weapon-- a dinky pistol-- with a shaking, battered hand. He can barely tell she's even a woman at first; she's not exactly a starlet under all that dirt and blood, and he's not sure she would be if it were cleaned away. She certainly doesn't _act_ like a lady.

"Go fuck yourself," is the first Hancock hears from the new resident, "with a hammer." Her voice echoes down the alley. 

She's more angry than she is strong, that's fucking clear. He thinks, once he rounds the corner and sees the sheer, raw determination in her eyes, that she might have taken Finn on in another situation, but the girl's clearly bleeding and dizzy with it. She's probably trying to intimidate him into submission. Takes guts when you look like you're on death's door.

Now, _that's_ an underdog. _That's_ what Goodneighbor is about. Which makes the decision about whose side Hancock's on even easier than it was ten seconds ago.

So he interrupts, real polite-like. "Someone steps through the gate for the first time, they're a guest. You lay off tat extortion crap."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her slump against the wall. It's pure exhaustion; the look on her face is anything but relieved. With beady, sunken-in eyes, she watches the proceedings with an admirable wariness.

The next few moments-- the last of Finn's life that involved intact internal organs-- flash by quickly. Through it all, he sizes her up. It's a benefit of the doubt he gives most of the vagabonds, freaks and miscreants who wander into his town; most of them don't catch his interest. But he likes something about how she doesn't back down when she's outgunned and out-manned. She's gonna die horribly, in a terrible and bloody mess, but it'll be a good story, one for the ages. That's worth preserving.

Afterward, while Finn takes his time about bleeding out on the curb, she walks up to him real slow. Clearly not totally convinced he's on her side-- he can't entirely blame her, though he hopes it's not a ghoul thing. And then, right as rain, she answers _that_ question for him.

"Are you a... burn victim? _Jesus_."

He can hear Fahrenheit snicker behind him.

He handles it like he always does. "You like it? I think it gives me a real 'king of the zombies' look. Real hit with the ladies."

Despite the earlier shock and horror, she bounces back quick. From her body language, he can tell she still thinks of him as a potential threat, but... less of one. Ferals don't make jokes.

"Yeah, bet you really corner the necrophilia crowd." She leans against the stone fence at her back, and begins pushing Finn over with her toe. The prick's still alive-- gut wounds never kill you as fast as they should-- and gurgling pathetically into the dirt. "Anyway," says the girl while she pulls out her battered pistol, "thanks. I don't got anything to give you, though." And she looks up at him with the angry intensity of before, but it fades quickly. She's too tired to keep it up. "And I'm not into sexy zombies."

"Hey, this is Goodneighbor. Everybody's welcome here. Part of my mayoral duties are keeping it that way," Hancock says, and reaches out to gently lower her gun. But she just shakes her head, inches to the side, and fires it straight into Finn's head. A waste of a bullet-- he would have died anyway, but not in a hurry. Hancock can't imagine bullets are something the kid has in great supply at the moment. Something about that's... it's the right kind of justice. 

The shot rings through the cobblestone. A few people look up, out of windows and over newspapers, but they look down again soon enough. This sort of thing isn't uncommon. It's home.

"I think you'll fit in here," Hancock says. He takes a step back, wiping some of the blood off his frock. "So long as you remember who's in charge."

She looks him square in the eye. "Yeah," she says, "whoever's got the sharpest knife."

That fucking stings, but in a slow way. He doesn't even entirely puzzle out the meaning until later. By then, he's rolling off a chem hangover and watching the sun rise, so the thought doesn't stay with him for long. Something about the bright orange sky is so much more brilliant and promising than being called corrupt by a stranger. 

Fahrenheit does what she always does with new blood, and has her boys keep an eye on the new kid. Two days later, Hancock knows plenty. Daisy says the girl sold her a vault suit-- which would explain some, but not all-- in exchange for some simple walking around clothes. There are reports of a dog she keeps, well trained as far as anyone can tell, and that's why she can sleep on a park bench without being shanked in the night. Charlie says her name is Joan, and she seemed like she was _about_ to ask for work, but changed her mind at the last minute. 

Which is enough to make Hancock lose interest, honestly. When people _do_ something, that's worth writing home about. This girl, Joan or whatever, just kind of lingers like a bad buzz. The beginning was interesting, but then it fizzled out and the sensation of disappointment hung around too long. Maybe he was wrong, and she won't get her brilliant ending. She'll just crash and no one will notice but whoever fishes her out of the gutter.

Later still, it turns out the person with that austere pleasure is him. He's wandered out-- the orange ones always make him jumpy-- and hears someone moving around the back of the statehouse. At first, he thinks someone's going to rob him-- he has his gun out and everything-- when he realizes it's just a hobo vomiting into a trash pile. 

The glow sight on his rifle, though, illuminates Joan's face.

In the eerie green light, he can tell she's cleaner, though he mostly attributes that to the rain they got last night. The difference isn't really prettier or uglier, but it is more clean-- he can see that her hair is red, actually, not dirt brown, and that she's got freckles naturally. He can also see the fat lip, broken nose, and infected scar. It's not a good look for anybody, but that's what happens when you let vault dwellers out to roam around the Commonwealth without a chaperon. Fucking tourists.

"Hey," he moves his gun to the side, shooing her away, "go puke in someone else's garbage."

She looks up at him with an expression of deep exhaustion, but there's amusement in those bloodshot eyes of hers. "Hey," she says, leaning against the wall for support, "by the people," she begins to slide down it, fainting in slow motion, "for the people."

Mother _fucker_.

•

She wakes on a dirty mattress in somebody else's attic-- not the first time ever, but the first time this century. Joan wakes up slow to find the zombie king leaning over her. No, shit, she knows his name, it's Hancock, and that's fucking _terrible_. Gotta think of something to say, maybe it'll hide her embarrassment. "You are _not_ prettier the morning after."

"Don't flatter yourself," he has that raspy voice all ghouls seem to, because-- she guesses from her limited knowledge of anatomy-- they're fucked up on the inside too, in their vocal cords. They're nice people, though, and she really ought to get over the initial horror, but it's so fucking hard to think when she can't keep food down anymore. "You're fucking lucky I fished you outta the gutter, or you'd be dead by now."

And that hurts her pride. She slumps back, using the nearest wall to keep her sitting upright, and wonders what kind of diseases she'll get from the splinters in century old unfinished wood. "Sorry for not dying sooner."

"So what? You just gonna roll over and let it happen?" He reaches out with a deformed, sinewy hand, and pokes her in the shoulder. "C'mon. You're tougher than that."

"This a mayoral duty, too?"

"You're wearing out my patience, sister."

She sighs, deep, and it burns the inside of her throat. She can't decide if it's right, to die this way. The worst thing is how it hurts her pride. "I'm dying," she says. "Didn't wanna do it on anybody's doorstep I knew. Sorry."

"You're not _dying_ , you little vaultie- look, here, take this." He presses a lukewarm bag of liquid into her hands, and gestures to a nearby cigar box (Joan will later discover the box is full of needles, and the bag is Radaway). "It'll make you puke again. Piss like a racehorse, too. But you'll live, not that you deserve it. Then go back to the vault where you belong, okay? People like you don't live long out here."

There are times when the truth is the sharpest knife in the room. "They're all dead, dickhead."

"What, you want me to cry? I'm sorry your vault left the door open and got lit up by raiders, or whatever happened, but c'mon. The world out here ain't nicer. Since your face looks like ground brahmin, I'd wager you already figured that part out. Go find some little safe bunker to live in before this world eats you up."

She persists, because she never knew when to give up. She should have stayed in Concord, not made a B-line for this shithole, but she had to see if her father's house still stood in Boston, and it didn't.

Thank God.

Thinking about family brings her back to the bitterness and the anger. "My son was fucking kidnapped. I'm not hiding out _anywhere_ until that- until that's dealt with."

Hancock smiles. It's not a nice one. "There we go." He puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. "That's the little psycho who walked through my front door."

"Don't call me that."

"What d'you wanna be called?"

"Joan. Joan's good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: Gut wounds usually take at least hours to die from, sometimes days, especially if they're from a knife small enough to hide in your back pocket. So, realistically (because Fallout is just so well known for its realism) Finn wouldn't have died immediately; playing around with that is why he doesn't go out like a dim bulb in this fic. TheMoreYouKnow.gif, etc.


	2. Decorum Est.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She scratched at her face, clearly stalling, before answering. "You ever heard of cryogenic suspension?"
> 
> "Yeah, it's when you get stoned in a snowstorm."

The new kid, Joan Something, lingers around for two days, three, in Hancock's attic. He goes up there a few times to hand out freebies to citizens, but Joan's always sleeping off the radiation poisoning, and he can't blame her. He remembers, a little, what that felt like. Sleep is probably good. And then one day, she leaves without a word; her cot is empty, and honestly? He forgets about her. He's got other things to worry about. 

Local gangs are getting a little too rowdy, and need to be put down. Daisy's got some job she wants done. There's a masked asshole thinks he's the Silver Shroud offing dealers in street corners, and somebody hired MacCready to shoot up the Triggermen for kidnapping Valentine. Word always makes it back to Goodneighbor in the end.

Problems fix themselves; people can always find some loser to finish their business if there are a pile of caps waiting for them at the end of it. 

Five months later, and Fahrenheit comes into his office with more soot and dirt on her than usual. "Somebody tried to break into your stronghold." Gotta love Fahrenheit, cutting to the chase like subtlety's a foreign fucking language.

Hancock had been spending the morning (morning is whenever he wakes up) trying to decide if the 'new kind' of jet his second-favorite dealer 'discovered' is actually poison, so it takes him a while to tune into the conversation. "What?"

Fahrenheit lights a cigarette and watches the flame dance at the end of the match with that adorable little psychitzoid smile of hers. "That place where you keep your retirement fund? Somebody broke into it. Also, Bobbi No-Nose is dead." 

Hancock's come back to himself by then; Junkyard Jeremy's jet isn't poison, it's just not safe for anyone who isn't a ghoul. He makes a mental note to spread the word later in the day-slash-night. Until then: "I take it," he says, "those two facts are related?"

Fahrenheit nods. "Bobbi had some lady in power armor with her for muscle. Turns out No-Nose told 'em they were breaking into the _other_ Mayor McDonough's stash." She winks.

"Har har. Get on with the story."

Fahrenheit takes another drag from her cigarette, cool as blue fire. "Anyway, the one in armor turned on Bobbi when we told her what she'd done. Guess they're just that scared of you."

Fahrenheit says it with pride-- it means she's done her job, why shouldn't she be proud of that?-- but, well. Maybe it's just the bad jet, but the thought of people _running_ , fearing, turning on each other because of him sits uneasily in the pit of his stomach. 

"Told her to come by for a chat with you. You can give her the key to the city." But Fahrenheit knows Hancock well enough to guess how he feels about this. She got the turncoat over here to talk to Hancock so he can figure out how he feels about the whole thing. Clever as hell.

So he waits. He goes about his business, and tries to ignore the annoyance and worry chewing at the back of his mind. _Is_ he the kind of person people run from? Would the Hancock of two years ago have let someone else deal with the Triggermen? Would he have stabbed Finn? Would he have kicked that drifter out? He definitely got Bobbi No-Nose killed, and he always respected her. Maybe not _liked_ her, but only that crazy shithead Mel actually _liked_ Bobbi. Maybe-

"Hey," Fahrenheit says, "Armored girl's here. You're gonna love this." Fahrenheit's voice is thick with that fancy German word that means she's getting a kick out of life being a bitch for somebody else. 

So Hancock comes in off the balcony, and he ends up smiling. "Well, would you look at that."

It's been five months, and Joan Whatserface is doing better. Still dirty, but the normal level of dirty everybody is. She sure isn't covered in vomit and bilge water anymore. Got more scars on her face, but who doesn't these days?

She smiles the same way Fahrenheit does, but with a little less psychosis. "Ta-da." Joan brings her hands up in a sarcastic flourish. "It's your favorite hobo."

"Strange, you don't look like my dealer." Well, his fourth favorite one. Hancock fishes a couple of caps out of his pocket. "Here. For protecting my stash."

"Didn't do it for money." But she takes it anyway. "I'm not your knife." The whole cold-gaze-full-of-murder thing works way better when she's not two rads shy from keeling over, Hancock's gotta admit. He ain't scared, but he can tell why other people would be. Why it's worth trying even if you're sick.

It reminds him of how he used to be when he started out, eyes full of justice and not scaring the shit out of people left and right. 

"Man, lemme tell you. Job ain't how it used to be. This classy little tricorner of mine is getting heavy."

Joan makes a strange motion with her hands, one Hancock doesn't recognize. Years later, he'd find she was pretending to play some Old World musical instrument. At the moment, it just looked strange. Her expression, though, that's easy to read, completely unsympathetic; she wasn't phased at all by his attempts at charm. It was oddly refreshing, after the day he'd spent wondering if he'd become the type of tyrant he'd like to take down.

"You don't seem the type to sugarcoat shit, huh."

"Yeah, part of the 'bitch' job description."

"Wouldn't go that far. But shit, you like being honest so much, gimme it straight: you think I'm a tyrant? Have I become the Man?"

Her brow furrows, and it highlights the white little scar running through it. As he hoped, she considers the question carefully. After a handful of seconds, she says, "everyone becomes the Man eventually. If they're anyone worth being."

"Nah, man, not me. I ain't gonna get caught up in that defeatist shit. You shouldn't either. To smart for that shit."

She frowns, clearly not expecting a compliment. It gives him an edge, so he presses it.

"Still waiting on an answer, Psycho."

She snaps back real quick. "I said don't _fucking_ call me that. I'd kick your ass if you weren't mayor- which, fuck, I guess answers your goddamn question. There." 

He grins. "You know what? I got an idea. Lemme run it by you. You're doing pretty well for yourself, but you're still a little vault baby. Need somebody to watch your back."

Joan holds her hands out in a hurry. "Fahrenheit scares the fucking shit out of me, _no_ , you already paid me-"

"Hey, hey, lemme finish, here." But he's smiling full-on, teeth and everything. "I been thinking. Need to do a little walk, do some thinking. Make sure the power doesn't go to my head, y'know?"

"You're saying we take a road trip." She looks skeptical.

"If that's what you wanna call it."

"You're fucking weird." But she's smiling too. "But who isn't anymore. Okay, let's go on a fucking field trip."

It takes a bit to get ready. He makes contingency plans with Fahrenheit, gives a little speech, collects on his dues, all the little housekeeping bullshit he did the last time he took a walkabout. Joan hunkers down in the attic (" _Just like old times. You just need to spike my beer with a heavy diuretic and we'll be set._ "), and by the next morning they're ready to go. 

They don't talk much, mowing through Boston's raider population, but eventually they hit the open air. From there, it's easy shit to hitch a ride on a caravan in return for muscle. Joan's apparently got business in Quincy needs dealing with. Then, it's just grey sky over the open road.

Joan has her head pillowed on a bag of feed, while Hancock's spending his time under the hood of the cart, avoiding the sun directly. He's got a limited amount of patience for comfortable silences, and reaches over to toe Joan in the ribs. She swats at him without looking up. "Hey, _hey_."

Finally, she looks over. 

"Figuring we outta get to know each other if this is gonna work out."

"Probably."

"Seems like you got a story to you, too, huh? How you left the vault and all. Most folks don't do that, if they got a safe roof over their heads."

"It wasn't safe."

"So? Tell me about it, shit. I ain't been to places like that. Hear they're real clean. So where you come from? Tell me about your kid. C' _mon_." He continues to toe her-- gently, gently-- in the ribs.

"Not your fucking business."

"Is if we're gonna hit the road together, which we already have, so it's too late for you. C'mon, fess up. I'm interested. Everybody loves talking 'bout themselves."

"Not me."

"Come _on_."

Finally, she looks at him. She holds up her hand, and wiggles the fingers in front of her face. In a tone of fake mystery, real overdone like those plays Connolly loves, she says, "I'm from another time."

"Yeah, fake as shit. But go ahead, tell me your- your little fairy tale."

She rolls her eyes, and looks away from him again. He thinks, for a bit, she's gonna go back to ignoring him, but then she speaks, "once upon a time..."

He laughs.

"Careful what you wish for." But there's a smile in her voice and a curve to her lip. "So, once upon a time, there was a girl named-"

"The Littlest Psycho."

She groans, but keeps going. "Whatever. So she grows up fucked up, bad family, who cares. The normal sob story. Leaves home young, joins a gang. Mostly muscle, some burglary, con artist shit too."

"Didn't know they got all that in vaults."

"Oh, you wanna tell the story now?"

"Fine, fine." He clicks his teeth. "Keep going." He's curious. Even if it's all fake, he's curious.

"She gets tired of the crime and shit. Too much work for- for too many people don't deserve it, but still get pulled in. That's how that shit works, after all. War made everybody desperate, schemes were easy as shit."

Hancock wonders what the fuck kind of war is worth having in a vault, but he's not so sure she's from one anymore. At least, not the way he thought. Too many things aren't adding up. 

"She meets this guy. Veteran, fought overseas. All washed up. Addicted to psycho, too, fucking big time. Withdrawal and everything, shaking, sweating, swearing at shadows, punched a hole in the fucking wall once. So if you were ever wondering, _that's_ what the Man does. Fucking sells out his loyal kids when they're young and loyal, gets 'em hooked on poison and propaganda, uses 'em up and tosses 'em away."

It sounded like a tirade she'd gone on before, and he let her work it out of her system without commenting.

"But when he was sober? You know, when he was all the way there? He was so fucking smart. I remember he had this poem he loved, it described how being a soldier was for him. It had... fancy Latin in it and shit, fuck. I used to know it. I fucking forgot it." For the first time, a real emotion creeps into her voice, something that wasn't just anger. It sounded a lot like loss. 

Fake or no, Hancock had a feeling he knew how this story ended.

"I forgot it," Joan says, "that means it doesn't exist anymore."

She was quiet a long time. Just when Hancock was going to ask if she was okay, she started up again. "So they got married, anyway. She left the gang, got fake papers as a lawyer so she'd fit in with all the other squares. Was even dumb enough to have a kid. And then the world ended and they all died. The end."

Now he really had to ask. "Shit, sorry. If you don't wanna tell me- I shouldn't've asked."

She scratched at her face, clearly stalling, before answering. "You ever heard of cryogenic suspension?"

"Yeah, it's when you get stoned in a snowstorm."

It made her laugh, thank Christ. "I'm from two hundred years ago. Vault-Tec froze us when the bombs fell. Some scumsuckers came in and killed everybody, stole my kid, and here I am. So, d'you believe that crap?"

"Does it matter?," he says, "you do." 

She kind of smiled at that. It made him feel better about egging her on.

He started reaching inside his jacket. "Here. Figure there's a better way to get to know each other than sob stories. You got anything against chems that _ain't_ psycho?"

"Not really. I mean, I never tried 'em, but..."

"Aww, didn't know we had a virgin with us. Here," he passes her a box of mentats. "Take it from another kind of veteran. I'll watch your ass, but this stuff's harmless, believe me."

Joan took the box with dull curiosity. "Aren't these party drugs? Jesus. What're the side effects?"

"You'll lose your appetite, your breath'll get bad. If you're a first-timer, you don't gotta worry about the deep stuff. It'll be fine."

"You're the boss, boss." And she took a few.

The thing Hancock loved about Mentats was how it made people a better version of themselves. You could find out what a person truly loved when they took it. They'd just start working on their passion, whatever it was, with this incredible fucking attention to accuracy and detail. He was curious to see what Joan's passion was-- he was guessing it was fighting, or something to do with guns, and she proved him wrong.

Joan spent the next hour telling him these long, rambling stories about dead people. 

They were all folks she'd known, and she talked about their interests like they were hers. Half way through her long explanation of her brother's musical tastes ( _"Do they even have Irish music anymore? I mean, they've _got_ to, right? Do you know 'Finnegan's Wake'? I know all the words. I fucking _hate_ that song. Luke goddamn loved it, Jesus, he'd sing it all the time. And 'Whiskey In The Jar', and-"_ ) Hancock realized this was probably her way of keeping them with her. 

It was sad and strange, and more than anything made him believe her story. Nobody could come up with some of the shit she was talking about on the fly.

As she came down from the high and started to crash, she went calm, and mostly muttered quietly to herself. He caught snippets of it here and there. At the tail end, the words rose up from her like she was possessed with them. Would've been freaky shit, if he hadn't seen it before in plenty of people who didn't know how to channel their high. 

She stared up at the sky, and talked to the clouds, "dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot conscieve of the possibility that the Commonwealth doesn't have 1) caravans 2) trade routes that you don't have to set up. Thus.


End file.
